Image: Art Tower
The eyes of the cougar were aflame in the light of the morning sun. The sun cast sparkles off the snow so bright it made him blink. He sat on the bank of the Grand River with one paw lightly resting on a drift of blood-sprinkled snow. He lifted his proud head to smell the air and gaze across the river in a forlorn mood. He was in no hurry to cross the river. He had gotten wet once, trying to do that. He had shivered for a long time, and now he was wary of the crack of untrustworthy ice.
It was January in the year of 1967. The snow had come in the night and was so deep he made a trench wherever he went. Geese flew over, honking softly. They moved and he knew he should be moving, too.
The sun promised to bring no warmth with the day. The river, like the earth, was frozen beneath the snow.
The cougar looked up the hill toward the house. He could see smoke coming from a fireplace. There was no wind and the smoke drifted sideways. He could smell meat on the smoke. He would rather have raw meat, but even the smell of meat in fire seemed good to him. He had not eaten in some time and hunger aggravated him like another wound. His injured paw made deer hard to catch. His paw was still swollen and raw with torn skin ; the blood seeped into the crust of snow and froze a red rim. He had caught a toe in a trap a few days before. Except for his quickness, he’d have lost his whole paw.
The cougar was from the Black Hills of Wyoming. His mother had driven him off and he had set out to find a place of his own. He had been attacked by larger and older males , wandered south and eventually crossed the northwest part of the state of Missouri. This was a place with rolling hills and grasslands and not many people. The deer got fat on the farmer’s corn and soybeans. Before he got hurt, the deer had been easy prey for the swift young cougar.
Missouri could not be his home. He needed untraveled mountains and unreachable forests. He needed a place where he would not bother or be bothered by man, his guns, his traps.
His head turned once again and his eyes cast beyond the river to a new home and freedom. His heart remembered the time when he played with a brother cub and had a mother. Hurt and lonely, his heart wished for such a magical place again, a safe place of favor and loyalties. He did not know then that such a place had been betrayed by the passing of suns.
Duane sat at the kitchen table while his mother fussed over the stove. They were alone. It was rare for the two of them to be alone in a house usually so full of people. The kitchen was warm and comfortable with their closeness and confidence.
His mother was stirring potatoes and green beans that boiled in a pot. She wore a housedress and a soiled apron. The stove was a gas stove with burners that flared deep red. From the oven seeped a fine vapor and the smell of roasted duck.
Duane sat at a table that had an oilcloth with a design of apples and pears over a laminated top. He wore a striped polo shirt and blue jeans. His blond hair was shaved close to his head.
He was studying magic tricks from a book called a Book of Mystery and Magic. He was practicing a floating match card trick. He didn’t have invisible thread and so he used fishing line. After he was done taping the line according to the instruction in the book, he placed the card in the palm of his hand. He kept his hand flat and balanced the match on the card.
“Ok, watch,” he said to his mother. “Watch!”
She half-turned from the stove to watch.
He waved his hand and squeezed the card to give the match the illusion of floating.
“Oh, my!” his mother said. “How did you do that?”
Duane was very proud that he could fool her and laughed with her.
He heard the outside door bang open and his brothers came into the porch that was attached to the main house. They stomped their feet and talked together as they shed their coats and boots.
They came into the kitchen and brought the cold in with them. They had been cutting wood. They smelled of sawdust and chainsaw gas. Duane had three older brothers, Burl, Matt and Harry. He also had older sisters. But his sisters were not home just then. They were at a neighbor’s birthday party. His father had gone in the pickup to get them and bring them home.
The brothers went into the living room to stand by the wood stove where a good fire was going. They warmed their hands and peeked beneath the dish towels that covered pans of baked bread and rolls.
His brother Matt watched from the kitchen doorway as Duane showed his mother the disappearing match trick again.
“There’s a string,” Matt said. He moved with a cat-like quickness and jerked the card out of Duane’s hand. He ripped off the twine. “He’s spoiled the deck.”
His mother placed the pan of potatoes on the table and took the duck out of the oven and called the boys to bring the bread and eat. The other two brothers came in to the kitchen, and they all sat down at the table.
“You know what would be a great trick?” Burl said to Duane. “Make yourself disappear.”
“He’s marking the cards so he can cheat,” Harry said.
Duane sighed and put the magic book on the floor under his chair. He would have to watch his plate now, or his brothers would steal his meat.
After dinner Duane went outside to sled. He was by himself because his brothers were too old to sled and his sisters, who had since come home, said they were too full of the birthday cake and it was too cold. His siblings stayed inside to read or listen to the radio or watch TV or play checkers.
Since there was no one to tell him he couldn’t, he was testing a new path to sled. This slope, if he could manage to dodge the trees, would go all the way down to the river. It was a steep grade. He was hoping the snow was deep enough to carry the runners over the rocks and he could go flying.
The day was a little windy. The sun was a haze behind dark blue clouds.
Duane sat on the sled and put one foot on the wooden crosspiece that was for steering. He used the other leg to shove himself off. It was not as good or fast a ride as he had hoped. There were too many rocks and buried brush to slow him. And the snow was not the right snow for sledding. It was soft and fluffy and in many places the runners dug down to the dirt. Nearing the bottom, he gained speed but then snagged on something and flipped over on the bank of the Grand.
He sat in the snow. He had gotten snow down the socks he used for gloves and it made his wrists ache. He brushed it out and then looked around him. He saw small tracks that were raccoon. There were tracks that looked like a dog paw and he knew were coyote. But then he saw the track that was huge and one of those had a bloody rim. The sight of it made him shiver and at the same time he felt a flush of warmth and his heartbeat quickened. He knew he had discovered something rare and that it might be important. There were no tracks over the snow-covered river. The tracks led away along the bank. He left the sled and followed the tracks.
He made his way to a log jam where his father and brothers had set a few traps. The traps and chains were hidden beneath the water and under the logs. The traps were made of metal with a powerful spring to catch raccoon, beaver, muskrat, otter, or mink. The hides of the animals were worth money. He had often watched his father and brothers skin the animals and hang the pelts to dry. His father sold fifteen raccoon hides last spring and paid for Duane’s new sled with the profit. The sled had been a Christmas gift. He knew the hides had paid for the sled because he had overheard his brothers talking. His brother Matt was the one that asked his father to buy the sled for him. Matt had caught Duane tearing the picture of the sled from the Sears, Roebuck catalog.
One of the traps had been sprung and drug up out of the icy water. Splotches of blood-soaked snow were frozen; it looked as though an animal had shook its foot and flung the blood.
Duane examined the trap more closely and saw that there was a claw in it still. He stepped on the lever to release the trap and took the claw out and looked at it. The claw was attached to a stiff lump of fur. He knew it belonged to a huge cat and he had heard stories about cougars. His hands shook as he put the claw in his pocket.
He followed the tracks with his eyes and realized he had backtracked the trail. He went back to the sled, back to the start. The lighter blood trail led the other way, still along a dredged path through the snow that ran close to the water. He followed the tracks and came to a ravine. The ravine was a tree-lined ditch that ran between two farmer’s fields. One of the fields belonged to his father. The other field belong to a neighbor, Argus Bell. He chose the closer bank of the channel. It was hard going. There was only a strip of trees on either side, boarded by the plowed fields. The trees were close and the ground was tangled with brush that tripped him and blackberry vines that caught his clothes and scratched his flesh.
He saw no tracks to follow, but still he found the cougar. If black soil had not stood out on white snow like a marker, he would not have found him.
The cougar was on the other side of the ravine. He had made his lair in the hollow trunk of a massive cottonwood tree. The dirt was soft inside the tree. He’d dug out a deep nest. Some of the dirt had been scratched out on the backside, which was the ravine side. This was the black dirt on white snow that had caught Duane’s eye. He could see the cougar’s golden pelt through the bared roots. The cougar waited motionless for the human to pass.
Duane felt inside his coat pocket to make sure he still had the claw. He wondered if the cougar could feel the claw in his palm. He had read somewhere that people could feel the limbs they’d lost just as though they were still attached to their bodies. His fist closed sweaty and tight and warm around the claw. His pulse pumped so hard it seemed to pump life into the claw. He saw the golden eyes of the cougar watching him through the roots of the tree. They stared at one another in a way that was both a challenge and chagrin and that made him feel light-headed and sick.
He stayed until it was too cold to stay. He went back to the river and retrieved his sled and started back home.
When he got back to the house, he stripped off his outer clothes that were wet by now and took off his boots. He was careful to take the claw out of his coat pocket; he looked at it again. The light was not good by the bare bulb, but he saw that it was slick and yellowed.
“What have you got there?” It was Matt. He’d been spying on him from the kitchen door.
“Nothing.” Duane quickly put the claw deep in his jean pocket. He brushed by his brother and went into the house and stood by the stove to dry.
His brothers and his father had been playing cards. They were playing stud poker and betting with pennies.
“He’s got something,” Matt said.
“No, I don’t,” Duane said.
“He does,” Matt said. “I saw it.”
“Have you got something?” his father said. “Did you find an arrowhead or a coin?”
Duane did not mind to show his father. His father would not steal it from him, like his brothers would. His father might even make sure he kept it.
He brought the claw out of his pocket.
His father took if from his palm and turned it to the light. His brothers huddled over the table and were trying to see it, too.
“It’s a cat’s claw,” his father said. “A big cat. Bigger than bobcat. Probably cougar.”
“I told you,” Harry said. He slammed the table. “I told you I heard a woman screaming in the night.”
“When a cougar howls, he sometimes sounds like a woman screaming,” his father explained to Duane. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it in the snow.”
Duane did not usually lie to his father. But it wasn’t really a lie, not really. He had found it in the trap and the trap was in the snow.
“Where? Where did you find it exactly?’
“By the grain bins.”
This was a flat out lie. The grain bins were as far from the river as a person could get and still be on the farm. But he knew his brothers had set traps in the woods there, too. And so, at least, it was a clever lie.
His brothers had already upended their chairs and headed for the porch and were putting on their coats and boots. His father loaded a rifle.
He looked at Duane who stood at the kitchen door and watched them.
“A cougar will kill the livestock and maybe people,” he said. “Mother Nature made her for killing. She kills with tooth and claw. And tooth and claw has no more feeling than a bullet.”
Duane moved to watch from the screen door of the porch as his father and brothers went outside. He was surprised to hear his father tell the boys to tie up the hounds. They were bluetick hounds and Duane supposed they would lead the hunt.
“A cougar will kill the hounds,” his father told them.
“We could keep them on chains,” Burl said. “They could track it and tree it.”
“No,” his father said. “He can do too much damage to good hounds. We’ll take them only if we can’t find the cat any other way.”
Duane got cold on the porch and went inside again to watch them from a window of his parent’s bedroom. He saw them walk down the hill toward the grain bins. His mother came into the room.
“Why didn’t you go with them?” she asked. She placed a basket of laundry on the bed and took out a sheet to fold.
“They won’t find it,” he said.
He waited for her to hand him the end of the sheet to help her fold it. She always had him help fold the bigger pieces like sheets and towels. But his mother did not give him the other end. She seemed to have forgotten to do that.
“They are hunting in the wrong place,” he told her. He was about to tell her that he knew where the cougar was, but something in the way she held the sheet waiting for him to speak, stopped him.
“Oh?” she said. She looked out the window. “Your father would not be happy to know that.”
The next morning Duane went outside to do his chores. The days were short in January and he worked in the dark. He milked the cow and fed the chickens and gathered the eggs and poured grain in the trough for the hogs. He wanted to get his chores done as quickly as he could. He knew his brothers and father would go to hunt the cougar again as soon as they were up and had breakfast, and so he hurried.
He had come up with a way to trick the cougar. He did not know that the cougar was wary to cross the river. But he did know his father and brothers would not cross the river to hunt him because the land on the other side did not belong to his father. It belonged to Argus Bell. Argus Bell did not like other people hunting on his land and had it posted with NO HUNTING signs and NO TRESPASSING signs that his father respected.
Duane kept gloves on so there would be no scent. He tied a cage to the top of his sled. It was a cage his brothers used to catch fox. He tied a long rope to the handle of the sled. Then he caught a live chicken. The hen squawked and flapped its wings and fanned his face. His mother had taught him how to calm the chickens. He bent the hen’s head under her wing and rocked her in the air until she was asleep. Then he put her between his outer coat and his sweater. She did not protest and stayed asleep and he was able to carry her without her falling out.
He walked down the slope by moonlight. The night had been bitterly cold, but it had not snowed again.
He reached the frozen river. He crossed to the other side. He looped the rope around a tree. Then he crossed back to the sled. He pulled the chicken out from beneath his coat. He put her inside the cage. The chicken clucked and squawked and hopped around.
He kept hold of the end of the rope and hid in a brush pile, up the river and downwind.
Just after daylight, the cougar came. He stood at the edge of the river. The chicken squawked loudly and flapped and flew against the cage at the sight of him. The cougar paced back and forth uncertainly many times, but he was very curious. His ears pricked and swiveled. Then he limped gingerly out on the ice. He neared the cage and the chicken squawked even louder and flapped even harder. Duane felt sorry for her, though he knew she wouldn’t get hurt. He only needed her for a lure. Duane tugged at the rope. It was hard to pull against the friction of the tree, but he managed to move the sled a few feet. The cougar was frightened by the movement of the cage at first, but after a few more times, he followed. Once the cougar spooked and went all the way back to the bank before daring to venture out again. Duane pulled the sled foot by foot across the frozen river. The cougar grew bolder and went farther out. Duane would never know if it would really have worked, if the cougar would really have found safety across the river on the neighbor’s land or gotten away.
The cougar was not halfway across the river when the shot rang out.
There was only one shot and it caught the cougar behind the ear . Before it died, the panther heard the sawing of his mother and the purring of his sibling and felt the warmth of their bodies near his. The panther fell dead.
Duane crawled out of the brush pile and looked up the hill at his father and brothers. They had followed him. They had known to watch and wait to see what he would do. Duane could smell the smoke from the gun.
He passed his father and his brothers on the way up the hill. He did not speak to them or look at them as he passed them.
It was not the killing of the cougar. He would grow to be a man and would hunt and fish.
It was the magic that died and slowly lost warmth, finally turning cold as bullet and bone.
*****
Tammy Huffman has a degree in English and Journalism. She lives in the rolling hills of northwest Missouri on the family farm. She works as a reporter on a home-town newspaper and writes short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. Her work has appeared in several journals recently.
*****
